I yanked out the shock to replace the spring with the heavier unit.
It was a bit of a pain in the rear. You have to undo the top and bottom bolts, then take out the linkage bolt. ..... actually it was easy.
Then raise the rear tire so the swingarm is about parallel with the ground. Rotate the entire shock counter clockwise so the resevoir can clear the opening and wiggle it out. That was the hard part. Took about 10 min.
To swap the spring you just back off the preload ring, then the spring is loose on the shock. The retainer ring will pretty much fall down and you then remove the retainer ring, and pull the spring out. Swap in the new spring, and put the retainer ring back in place while you snug up the preload to hold it all in place.
Then back in it goes. wiggling the new spring and shock in place took some time to get it all to slide in. Once in place, I put the top bolt in, then the bottom bolt, then I used a combination of the jack stand to align the swingarm to about the right spot- then got a screwdriver in the hole to line up the linkage and hold it in place.
Then I chased the screwdriver end with the bolt from the opposite side. All done.
The only thing that sucks is that the new spring is a boring black color. I liked the old white one- it looked cool.
